This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Coming soon: a new movie about the other Harry Potter

Everybody&rsquo;s other favourite kid with magical powers, Harry Potter Jr., is set to return to the big screen in a remake of the cult classic Troll.

A screenshot from the 1986 cult classic "Troll" which follows the adventures of Harry Potter, a young boy who moves into an apartment complex with his family to find it inhabited by a nasty little troll from a mystical world. Hollywood filmmakers say they are planning a remake of the film. (Troll the movie screengrab)

By Kenyon WallaceToronto Star

Tues., July 26, 2011

A new Harry Potter movie is already in the works, even though the latest film about the gang from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is still in theatres.

But it ain’t a continuation of the adventures of J. K. Rowling’s intrepid boy wizard. It’s about everybody’s other favourite kid with magical powers — Harry Potter Jr. — and his father, Harry Potter Sr., the lead characters in the 1986 underground hit Troll.

Hollywood producers are in the midst of casting a remake of the obscure film and expect to go into production “right away,” the filmmakers’ legal advisor Thomas Girardi told the Star.

He said financing has been secured and two well-known actors — a male and a female — have been cast for major roles, along with a child actor playing the movie’s hero, Harry Potter; no names have been released. Girardi, a well-known California lawyer famous for his multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements, including one against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company made famous in the 2000 movie Erin Brockovich, would not confirm rumours that the original film’s director, John Buechler, was returning to helm the new version.

“In the next month or so, a lot more information will break out,” he said.

Article Continued Below

The original movie chronicled the adventures of Harry Potter Jr., played by The NeverEnding Story actor Noah Hathaway, after his sister, Wendy, is attacked and taken over by a troll in the Potter family’s new apartment complex in San Francisco.

Harry befriends a tenant who lives upstairs, the mysterious Eunice St. Clair, who tells him the troll is in fact a wizard named Torok who lost his powers many years before when the world was inhabited by fairies. Seeking to regain his powers, Torok begins transforming the complex’s apartments into jungles and its occupants into strange creatures. Eunice and Harry set out to rescue Wendy and stop Torok’s evil plan to take over the world.

The movie also stars the well-known actors Michael Moriarty, Sonny Bono, June Lockhart, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who went on to find fame as Elaine Benes in Seinfeld.

Troll is not to be confused with the unrelated Troll 2, a 1989 movie that was the subject of the documentary Best Worst Movie.

While some of the film’s themes might ring a bell, Girardi says Troll’s owner decided not to sue J.K. Rowling or Warner Bros., the makers of the Hogwarts Harry Potter movies, because of a family tragedy at the time.

“So they just put it on the back burner and the next thing you know, even when it was ripe to go forward, there was a timing problem, so nothing was done,” he said.

Rowling’s first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (a.k.a. The Sorcerer’s Stone in the U.S.), came out 11 years after Troll was produced.

Warner Bros. did not respond to the Star’s request for comment.

Girardi says there is no problem with doing a remake of Troll because “you can remake your own stuff.”

“Everybody knows it was our stuff,” he continued. “We made this movie years before [J. K. Rowling] even came out with her book . . . the coincidence is just a little too great, especially when you get involved with the subject matter of the film.”

Peter Davy, a film producer and partner with Buechler, told the Hollywood News in 2008 that “there are a lot of similarities between the theme of [J. K. Rowling’s] books and the original Troll.”

“In John’s opinion, he created the first Harry Potter. J. K. Rowling says the idea just came to her. John doesn’t think so,” he told the industry publication. “John was shocked when she came out with Harry Potter.”

Delivered dailyThe Morning Headlines Newsletter

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com